After stampeding into Indian equities in 2014, investors are heading for the exit this year, with the country's stock market emerging as one of the worst performers in Asia during the first half.
The benchmark S&P BSE Sensex is up a mere 1 percent year-to-date, lagging far behind China's Shanghai Composite (Shanghai Stock Exchange: .SSEC) - the region's top performer - which is up 32 percent even after taking into account its recent 20-plus percent pullback.
"India's underperformance is very much due to the fact that initial expectations for reforms under Narendra Modi's government have not been met. Foreign investors, in particular, have looked at that and withdrawn from the market to a significant extent," Uwe Parpart, head of research at Reorient Financial Markets, told CNBC.
Indian's equity market rallied more than 30 percent last year in a wave of optimism after Prime Minister Modi and his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) swept into power on a promise to revive the sluggish economy. While growth has picked up - largely on account of the government's new methodology for calculating gross domestic product (GDP) - investment levels remain low, corporate balance sheets weak and banks' non-performing loans are rising, according to analysts.
There were just a handful of markets in the region that performed worse than India. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 (ASX: .AXJO) is up just 0.9 percent so far this year. While performance in equity markets in Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia ranged from a 0.2 percent gain to 6 percent loss.
While he's not totally writing India off just yet, Parpart says there are more attractive investment opportunities elsewhere in the region.
"I would like to see a much clearer commitment to reforms, including stepping up privatization and decisively cutting subsidies. There were lots of opportunities to do that with lower energy prices, those have been missed," he said, when asked what it would take for him to reconsider Indian stocks.
His top pick in the region is Asia's second best performing market - Japan. The country's benchmark Nikkei 225 (CBOE: .NKXQ) is up 16 percent this year.
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"We've had a strong buy recommendation on Japan for some time and see no reason to change that," Parpart said.
His upbeat outlook on Japanese equities is driven by the country's supportive monetary policy and improving macroeconomic backdrop.
"The economy has been steadily improving. Consumption, after being hit by the VAT hike, has been picking up. Capital investment by businesses is proceeding at a larger scale than most expected - these are positive signs," he said.